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- Hi guys, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?
Eric – Hey! Doing great!
Tom: We’re doing great! It’s been a very busy year of recording, promoting, and playing shows. We’ve put a lot of effort into releasing our album this past summer and are looking forward to writing some new music
- So Constellations Strange is your debut album, but FarFarAway already had a year of playing 21 stages across the Twin Cities before releasing it. How did those early live shows shape the sound and identity of the band?
Eric – The first year of live shows was definitely us finding our sound—For me it was finding my voice for sure—Learning our live synergies versus how we work together in a rehearsal setting, ya know?
Tom: We write with our live show in mind constantly and keep at the forefront how our songs come across at a live show, especially to people who have never seen us before. We’re still a relatively new band and we’re still trying to gather an audience, so writing stuff and performing it in a way that is memorable is important to us. We try to find that fine line between writing stuff that is not only unique and catches your attention musically, but also gives us that ability to “rock out” on stage and just have a bunch of fun with it.
- You describe yourselves as a Minneapolis-area band that doesn’t sound like your typical Minnesota rock outfit, combining the grit of ’80s thrash with the emotional intensity and hooks of modern emo. Where did that particular combination come from?
Eric – Something that’s interesting to me is how we’re all sort of inspired by generally the same bands. But since I’m a few years younger than the rest of the guys, the era of those bands that inspired me is slightly different—like which NOFX or AFI album was your first, ya know? I think that plays into how my vocals can sort of skew more emo, as I was a teen smack dab in the throws of the emo scene.
Tom: I’d say that combo just comes from each of us having a very wide range of different rock influences as individuals and then all five of us bring those influences and styles to the table. I think it’s kind of cool that we will all talk to each other about different bands and songs that we love, yet when you hear our finished songs, it’s kind of hard to pinpoint with any certain precision where a particular riff or bass line is influenced by. There’s certainly no doubt that we take a lot of influence from mid to late 90s west coast melodic punk, but there’s also notes of 80s crossover thrash and turn of the century pop-punk and emo as well. I think it’s cool that we give ourselves the freedom to explore different elements of various rock sub-genres and see what works well together. It’s so much more fun than saying “we’re a punk rock band and we’re going to make punk rock in punk rock style and not stray from what punk rock should sound like”. We don’t limit ourselves and the end result is something we’re all pretty happy with.
- There’s a strong nostalgia running through the album, especially for the era of mixtapes, skate videos, and snowboard videos introducing people to new music. What is it about that period of discovering music that you wanted to capture with Constellations Strange?
Eric – I grew up in a small, rural town with not much going on. But I am an avid skateboarder and snowboarder. So my musical discovery happened on the VHS tapes I picked up from skate shops when I’d venture into the city. Without skate and snowboard videos, my taste would likely be very different.
Tom: We all grew up going to events like the Warped Tour, in particular, during that tour’s era of when it was nearly exclusively punk rock bands. So from that standpoint we all have the influence from that musically empassioned time in our lives that never left us. I’ve always been drawn to that type of music because it was aggressive, had just the right amount of angry, but is still musical and listenable. 90s punk always felt like the right combination of happiness, laughter, heartbreak and anger all rolled into one. It seems like rock music started to separate out those emotions after the turn of the century so we wanted to jam them all back together again.
- When you’re writing a song, do you usually start with the aggressive instrumental side and build the emotion around it, or does the emotional hook come first?
Eric – A rough draft of instrumentation happens first, typically. I like to let the guys figure out a structure to the sound before I get too married to anything. Then I will sort of let my vocal lines fall naturally into whatever is going on.
Tom: Moose usually comes up with the riffs because he is constantly noodling on the guitar and comes up with a rough song structure and that’s how most of our songs begin. After that it’s all pretty much a jam session to figure out everyone’s place in the song. We try to challenge ourselves to get out of our comfort zones and explore elements that we may not have known we were capable of. But in the writing process it’s all about the live show. If something doesn’t seem like it will carry well on stage, it gets re-worked or shelved.
- With Eric on vocals and Timmy G, Moose, and Tom also contributing vocals, how does having multiple voices within the band affect your songwriting and arrangements?
Eric – I start with the main vocal line first. Secondary vocal lines kind of come in as the song evolves but usually way later in the process as my lyrics, cadence and melodies evolve. I’ll sing a vocal line over and over and end up disliking certain lyrics or parts through that process. So the other vocal lines are kind of icing on the cake at the end. That final layer that really elevates what’s already there.
Tom: Eric is our primary lyricist and he’s pretty good at developing melody and cadence of the vocals. He also has a keen ear for where harmonies and vocal accents should go in the songs. When it comes to whose voice goes where, often times it comes down to who has a guitar or bass part that even allows them to add a backup vocal. Like we keep saying, it’s all about the live show! We don’t want to write or record anything that we can’t pull off live. That being said, I’m the designated screamer in the band so if we need a gruff yelling part, that’s my wheelhouse!
- The album is aimed in part at listeners who grew up with the alternative scenes of the ’90s and 2000s. What did you take from that generation of rock and alternative music that still feels relevant to you today?
Eric – There’s a rawness and honesty to the music of that moment in time. Music ebbed away from the over production and polish of 80’s glam. And it was before technology became more accessible and things started to become over produced and autotuned again by the 2010s.
Tom: I don’t know, it just feels like that was a bit more of a care-free era of rock music. The 80s were a great era for rock as well but some of the hard rock and metal of that decade was a little intimidating. You could watch guitar players from that time and just give up because they were so damn good and could pull off these unreal solos and stuff and it was all super flashy. The 90s ushered in an element of accessibility that I don’t think we had seen in the previous 30 years of so of rock music. Punk and hardcore kind of simplified things in the early 80s and I love and appreciate so much from that era, but the 90s bands kind of took those records and put a little more musical proficiency to it. Not so proficient that it made you put your guitar down and give up, but made you feel like you could add your own spin to the genre.
- You’ve described the band as having a “high-energy, action-packed” live performance. What do you think FarFarAway brings to the stage that might not fully come across on the studio version of Constellations Strange?
Eric – I thought we did a really solid job of capturing our energy in a studio setting to be honest. It’s hard to get that pure energy when you are scrutinizing every detail. But other than me getting kicked in the face by Timmy every other show, there’s not much that we missed.
Tom: We’re definitely not five guys who just stand still and just play our guitars and drums. We have fun because we want the audience to have fun, so we goof around with each other and jump and stomp around and stuff because, well, it’s fun to do. It’s just better than standing there! The album was also essentially recorded live anyway. We’re a DIY band with day jobs and families and stuff so we didn’t have the luxury of weeks in a studio carefully tracking each and every element that was recorded. Timmy, Moose, and I were all set up in the same room with Marty and his drums, with our amps isolated in separate rooms. So when we hit record, we basically laid everything down at the same time. We only recorded vocals separately. I think what we bring live comes through pretty well on the album because of our recording process.
- There are five musicians in the band, each coming together with their own influences and experiences. Was there ever a moment during the making of the album when two very different musical ideas collided and unexpectedly became something better?
Tom: That happens all the time in our writing process. Moose and I are stylistically very different guitar players. He is pretty naturally gifted at the more technical stuff where as I just like to open up the throttle and go nuts on open chords. We compliment each other pretty well in that regard. It’s great being in a band with him because I get out of my comfort zone and force myself to be a better guitar player.
- As a debut, Constellations Strange has the difficult job of introducing listeners to who FarFarAway are while also establishing where you want to go next. What did you learn about yourselves during the process of making your first full-length?
Eric – I think we learned that we can actually do this. It’s not easy to record a full length and feel like every song provides something different and has purpose to be included in that body of work. I think we also learned not to oversteer our ship too much. Letting the pieces fall and allowing ourselves to let go of things that feel forced or aren’t working quite right keeps things honest.
Tom: So the week leading up to recording the album, we played a show on a Thursday night, Eric played a show with his other band on Friday night, and then we were in the studio for two back-to-back 12 hour marathon recording sessions on Saturday morning. So the biggest lesson I’d say we learned is don’t overextend ourselves! For most of us it had been a long time since we had been in a studio so keeping it loose and patient with yourself and your bandmates is essential. We’ve also learned a lot about release and promotion after the recording is done, which requires a whole different level of patience. We are so ready to explore writing new material, but we know we still need to present these 12 songs to new listeners.
- Now that Constellations Strange is out in the world, what would you love for someone who discovers FarFarAway through this album to take away from the experience—especially someone who remembers when finding a new band through a mixtape or skate video could completely change their musical world?
Eric – We’re not setting out to be overly nostalgic. But I firmly believe that emotions can cross time and music has the ability to be a vessel for that time travel. So if there’s a familiarity in our sound that pulls someone back to a feeling, or at a minimum if it gets your head nodding then we’ve succeeded in our role as artists.
Tom: I’d say remember that music is fun for bands and fans alike so please pique your curiosity if you get presented with a band you’ve never heard on social media or if it is recommended to you on a streaming service. Explore what else that band has to offer. Follow bands on social media and push the tech algorithms to spread the word about them by liking and sharing their posts and promos. It helps bands so much and costs absolutely nothing. AND GO TO SHOWS! Wherever you are, there is a band playing somewhere and they want nothing more than to perform for people. The musician community supports each other, but we all need music FANS to get involved just by going to shows. It makes the experience so much better for everyone.
WEBSITE & SOCIALS:
Website: https://www.farfarawayband.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/farfaraway_stp/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61572063603370
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@farfaraway.stp?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc
Bandcamp: https://farfaraway-stp.bandcamp.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/490rVPFm6pcN8iWh3Fj7Dp?si=ZgEIqnkyQQK3s_oC3F8J8w
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FarFarAwayStP
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/farfaraway/1770535755
Link tree: (also free) https://linktr.ee/farfaraway.stp
